How Respondents Access Your Survey
Once you've uploaded your survey to your Internet server and verified that it is working properly, you need to decide how to invite respondents to complete it. The most common way to invite respondents is via email with an embedded link. Other methods include linking from another survey or website, or directly typing an address within the browser.
Respondents can open the survey by browsing to (or clicking a link to): http://www.yourwebserver.com/study1/login.html
where www.yourwebserver.com is the URL for your server
study1 is the folder containing your project (your "Remote Path")
mystudy is the name of your study
Getting to your survey:
1. Email URL Links. Modern email programs recognize URL addresses such as http://www.sawtoothsoftware.com and creates a clickable link. When such a link is clicked, their computer automatically launches their default web to your survey site referenced in the link. You can also include identifier information (or other link variables) in the link.
2. Link from Website or Other Survey. Respondents browsing a site on the Internet or taking another survey click a submit button or link (either text-based or clickable graphic) that connects them to your survey. You can also include identifiers or other link variables in the link.
3. Typed URL. Respondents connect to the Internet and type the URL into their browser (or cut and paste it from an email message) to access your survey.
Many panel providers include the ability to email respondents. If you need to send emails yourself, we suggest you use one of the many bulk email packages available on the market (check applicable laws and regulations dealing with bulk email). These permit you to automatically process hundreds or thousands of email messages at a time. When the respondent receives the email, they do not have access to the email addresses of other respondents; they only have the return path email address to your account that sent the message. An automatic bulk email package can also import customized text strings from a database into the email message. Those text strings might include the respondent's identifier and/or link variables defined in Lighthouse Studio.
Next we'll discuss the ways respondent links can be formatted.
Simple Link
If you type the following into an email message, it becomes a clickable link (underlined clickable text string, that sends respondents automatically to a web page):
https://p1.sawtoothsoftware.com/login.html
The link sends the respondent to the survey's first page. Usually this will be the first question, but if you included a login page it will go there for the respondent to enter their identifier.
Link with Passwords
You might prefer to use a link that automatically logs respondents into the survey. When respondents click such a link to start the survey, they skip any Login page (if specified). Here is an example of a link that will automatically log in a respondent and take them to the first question of the survey:
https://p1.sawtoothsoftware.com/cgi-bin/ciwweb.pl?studyname=studyabc&pid=michael
In the example above the survey name is "studyabc". Also the respondent identifier "pid" has been setup within the Questionnaire Access window and the value "michael".
You can also pass additional variables into the data set, as long as those are defined as Link Variables within the Questionnaire Access window. For example, if we define a variable called panelid, we can specify this as below:
https://p1.sawtoothsoftware.com/cgi-bin/ciwweb.pl?studyname=studyabc&pid=michael&panelid=7362836
When respondents start the survey by clicking the link, if the identifier is valid (and the quota is not complete) the respondent is sent to the first page of the survey. If the respondent is restarting an interview, the page where he/she left off is displayed. Any passed in information is stored in the database as if it were any other question in the survey.
Note: This only works when restarting a survey.
If you want to restart a questionnaire at a specific question, you can do so by including a "sys_skipto" variable within the link. For example:
https://p1.sawtoothsoftware.com/cgi-bin/ciwweb.pl?studyname=studyabc&pid=michael&panelid=7362836&sys_skipto=Q11
The link above restarts the studyabc survey and skips respondents directly to Q11.
The most common use for this functionality is for linking multiple surveys (such as multiple conjoint modules) while still maintaining quota control. For example, consider the following study design:
Study1 (general-type survey)
•Study2 (CBC survey #1)
•Study3 (CBC survey #2)
All respondents start in Study1 and complete Q1-Q10. After Q10, respondents receive either Study2 or Study3, depending on answers within Study1. After completing the CBC section, respondents return to Study1 to complete the survey (Q11-Q20) and be counted toward the quotas that are maintained in Study1.
To do this, a skip pattern is inserted within Study1 that skips respondents from Q10 to one of two Terminate questions placed in Study1. The Terminate questions mark respondents as incomplete and link them to either Study2 or Study3. Then, at the end of Study2 and Study3, Terminate questions link respondents back to Study1, with sys_skipto=Q11 placed within the URL. Respondents finish Q11-Q20 and reach a Terminate question in Study1 that marks respondents as complete.
Note: if restarting a survey and skipping forward within the questionnaire, make sure not to set link variables to new values. If a link variable has already been stored and is later resubmitted as a different value, the original value is maintained.
Important Note:
If the text string for the URL becomes too long, your email package may automatically "wrap" the text in the middle of the link by inserting a hard return. This could disable the link and it will no longer work. Make sure to test that the link works properly by sending test messages to yourself and other individuals (preferably outside your company's own internal email system) prior to emailing invitations to respondents.
Sending email in HTML format can decrease the chance of links wrapping incorrectly and becoming broken.
